John McCain And Marco Rubio’s “Let’s End Conservatism In America Amnesty Bill”

I am strongly against amnesty. The most important thing we need to do is enforce our existing laws. We have existing immigration laws that are not being adequately enforced. Nothing will make it harder to enforce the existing laws, if you reward people who broke them. It demoralizes people who are going through the legal process, it’s a very clear signal of why go through the legal process, if you can accomplish the same thing if you go through the illegal process. And number two, it demoralizes the people enforcing the laws. I am not, and I will never support any effort to grant blanket legalization/amnesty to folks who have entered, stayed in this country illegally. — Marco Rubio, 2010

Question: At this point, if your original (comprehensive immigration bill) came to a vote on the Senate floor, would you vote for it? […]John McCain: No, I would not, because we know what the situation is today. The people want the borders secured first. — John McCain, 2008

Do you think the Tasmanian tiger would have voted to end the existence of its species on earth? How about the Dodo? What about the Tyrannosaurus Rex?

It’s tempting to say that none of them would have voted to destroy themselves, but since John McCain and Marco Rubio are engineering nothing less than the end of conservatism as a political force in America with the immigration bill they’re working on right now, it’s hard to say.

For all practical purposes, what the Gang of 8 amnesty bill does is permanently ensconce 11 million plus illegal immigrants in our country in return for mostly waivable promises of border security that will never be fulfilled and a permanent liberal majority. This is a phenomenal deal for Democrats and people who came to this country illegally; so it’s easy to understand why they’d back the deal.

Why there are so many conservatives in Congress who are willing to put conservatism’s neck in a noose and jump off a stool is harder to say.

As always, money is helping to grease the wheels. There are corrupt businessmen who have made such a killing by hiring illegals to do jobs that should have gone to American workers that they have plenty of cash to spread around. Combine them with the greedy tech companies that are willing to saddle the public with 11 million illegal aliens if they can get some new high skill immigrant workers in the bargain and you have the primary reason this bill is getting Republican support. If you took that cash flow out of the equation, a bill this suicidal would have been a non-starter.

Still, not everyone who supports the amnesty bill is selling out conservatism’s birthright for a bowl of porridge. There are some people who earnestly but foolishly believe an amnesty will magically fix the Republican Party’s problem with Hispanics.

Of course, that is completely irrational. In fact, the GOP’s numbers with Hispanic Americans are likely to GO DOWN if this bill is signed.

That’s certainly what happened with the GOP in the eighties. Ronald Reagan received 37% of the Hispanic vote in 1984, signed an amnesty in 1986, and then in 1988, George H.W. Bush got 30% of the Hispanic vote. Chances are, we wouldn’t even do that well in 2016 since Presidents tend to get the credit for legislation that’s signed on their watch. Who got credit for welfare reform and balancing the budget in the nineties? Bill Clinton or the Republicans in Congress who forced him to do it? Bill Clinton. Here’s an even better example: Who got credit for the 1964 Civil Rights Act? LBJ, who was known to drop the N-word from time to time or the Republicans in Congress who voted for it in greater numbers percentage-wise than the Democrats? Lyndon Johnson got all the credit.

So, who would get credit for an amnesty? Barack Obama or Marco Rubio, John McCain and the other Republicans who are breaking their campaign promises and selling out conservatives to back this bill? Naturally, Barack Obama would take all the credit, the media would trumpet his incredible “civil rights” victory on behalf of Hispanics — and that’s when the Democrats would follow up with ads attacking Republicans for hating Hispanics so much.

The ads practically write themselves. Barack Obama wanted to give “undocumented Americans” citizenship right away, but Republicans HATED HISPANICS SO MUCH that they insisted on Jim Crow laws that denied those poor, innocent Americans-in-waiting their civil rights by refusing to immediately let them become Americans.

Would it work?

Yes, it would because Barack Obama WOULD BE THE ONE who deserved credit for a bill, Hispanic voters are already predisposed to vote for the Democrats, there will be millions of Republicans bitterly complaining about the bill passing and unbelievably, the GOP still doesn’t do any Hispanic outreach of significance. In fact, it’s entirely possible this bill could produce a double whammy: lower numbers with Hispanic voters AND lower numbers with white Republican voters, who would be justifiably furious that they were lied to and betrayed yet again by the GOP.

Worse yet, if this bill passes, it will end conservatism in America as a political force.

Sure, there will still be conservatives, just as there are still conservatives in California, but there simply won’t be enough of them to win elections any longer because conservatives will have imported so many new Democrat voters. This is EXACTLY what Democrats think they’re doing with the bill and they’re right.

As a starting point, it’s worth noting that Barack Obama beat Mitt Romney by about 5 million votes in 2012 and Hispanic voters went for Obama 73-27 over Mitt Romney. Incidentally, somewhere between 20%-40% of Hispanic voters typically vote for the Republican candidate; so Romney’s numbers weren’t a historic low, nor were Romney’s numbers with Hispanics decisive. In fact, Mitt Romney would have had to get 73% of the Hispanic vote in 2012 to win or alternately, another 4% of the much larger white vote.

Now, we don’t know exactly how many illegal immigrants are in the United States, but 12 million seems to be accepted as a good, rough estimate. Even if given the opportunity, all of those illegal aliens wouldn’t want American citizenship and out of the ones that do, a small percentage (after they would be given waiver after waiver) wouldn’t qualify. On the other hand, the bill actually allows illegals who were already deported to come back to the United States and the documentation standards would be so lax that millions of illegals who don’t qualify would be able to pour over the border and get in on the program. Although it’s very difficult to estimate how many people will end up qualifying for a process where everyone involved is engaged in some form of lawbreaking and document fraud, let’s say 10 million make the cut. Unfortunately, that’s not where it ends.

DREAM beneficiaries will also be able to get green cards for their parents, spouses, and children five years from enactment. Those family members will then be eligible for citizenship five years after that. Therefore, the DREAM provision of the bill alone could be responsible for potentially as many as 10 million new citizens over an approximate 10-plus year time frame.

Let’s conservatively toss in another 5 million new citizens from the other chain migration provisions in the bill and we’re up to 25 million new Americans from this latest amnesty. If they break for Democrats 70/30, which incidentally would be more favorable numbers than either Bob Dole or Mitt Romney ran up, then the Democrats would add on another 10 million votes. If that happens, states like Texas will flip to the Democrats and there won’t be another conservative President in our lifetime.

In other words, this issue is more important than the debt, abortion, defense, fighting terrorism, Obamacare, trade, low taxes, the 2nd Amendment and every other conservative issue you can come up with, because if we lose on illegal immigration, we will LOSE ON ALL OF THOSE OTHER ISSUES.

Of course, Marco Rubio, John McCain and company will just wave these arguments off, but remember: they’ve already both lied gratuitously to you on this issue. If this was 2008, the first person to oppose this bill would be John “Complete the danged fence” McCain. If it were 2010, the first person in line to condemn Marco Rubio’s plan would be Marco Rubio. These are men who have already lied about illegal immigration, they oppose enforcing the illegal immigration laws on the books, but they’re promising that if we give illegals amnesty, we can trust them to really get tough. How could any intelligent person believe that? It’s like having an alcoholic promise you he’ll sober up for good if you give him access to the liquor cabinet this week-end.

This bill also requires the American people to have complete faith in the Obama Administration because most of the security measures are toothless or can alternately be waived or just ignored at their discretion. How in the world can we put blind faith in the same Obama Administration that’s ignoring our current immigration laws and persecuting conservatives with the IRS? When John McCain, Marco Rubio and the rest of the Gang of 8 look you in the eye and say we can trust the Obama Administration, maybe, just maybe you should start to doubt their good intentions.

Anyone who votes for this immigration bill, either Republican or Democrat, deserves to be bounced out of office. They’re treating conservatives like we’re stupid. Don’t be as stupid as they think you are and support a bill that will mean the end of conservatism in the United States.

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John Hawkins's book 101 Things All Young Adults Should Know is filled with lessons that newly minted adults need in order to get the most out of life. Gleaned from a lifetime of trial, error, and writing it down, Hawkins provides advice everyone can benefit from in short, digestible chapters.